Читать книгу A Companion to Chomsky - Группа авторов - Страница 21

1 1 See, for example, Cowie (1999), Pullum & Scholz (2002), Everett (2012), Evans and Levinson (2009), Tomasello (2003), Evans (2014), Chater, Clark, Goldsmith & Perfors (2015), and Christiansen & Chater (2017).

2 2 The focus on hierarchical structure and the generative ability of the grammar was a radical break with the work of Chomsky's mentor, Zellig Harris (see the biographical sketch), and all the other linguists of the era. Harris's work in the 1950s also made use of transformations, but these were different formally and in the (descriptive, not explanatory) role that they were intended to play. (See Collins 2008, 66–67; Newmeyer 1986, 4–6).

3 3 Declaratives are sentences of the type whose default use is making statements; interrogatives are of the type dedicated to asking questions. A polar (or yes/no) interrogative is one inviting a “yes/no” response (in contrast to wh‐interrogatives which are formed with wh‐words such as who, what, where, which – see below for examples of these).

4 4 For expository purposes, we illustrate the point using somewhat different examples from Chomsky 1955 and 1957 (cf. Chomsky 2013b, 651–652), and the theory as we set it out here (very informally) is closer to work from the 1960s. For a more rigorous presentation of the analyses in Chomsky 1957, including evidence for structure dependence, see Lasnik et al. 2000, especially chapter 1.

5 5 On this cognitive turn, see Collins (2008, ch. 4) and Chomsky (1975), where Chomsky says that questions of cognition were in the “immediate background” in his work in the 1950s, but he thought it “too audacious” to set them out. (See also below.) The locus classicus for the cognitive conception is Chomsky's influential Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965).

6 6 It's important to see that the universals of UG need not be manifested in every language. UG apparently provides options and constraints. Not every language makes use of every option, and thus some of the constraints may not be visible in that language. For example, the constraint barring wh‐movement out of conjoined constituents (as in the example that follows) would not be visible in a language that lacks wh‐words or conjunction.

7 7 Stars in front of a sentence indicate ungrammaticality. Some other WhyNots that point to other, more difficult‐to‐specify constraints:Who did stories of scare Mary?Who did Susan ask why Sam was waiting for __?(cf. Susan asked why Sam was waiting for Bill.)Who do you wanna laugh? (cf. I want Bill to laugh.)I want a book you've in the car (vs. you have).I know I should go home, but I don't want *(to) (i.e., one needs “to”).He hopes John will win (where he = John).

8 8 Chomsky's master's thesis was an expanded version of his 1949 undergraduate honors essay, “Morphophonemics of modern Hebrew.” (On this early work, see Newmeyer 1996, ch. 2.)

9 9 It is crucial to note that the issue here concerns the characterization of the grammar, with no commitment to whether or not “derivational steps” are realized in the brain in real time.

10 10 On the complex history of lexical semantics, with brief commentary on Chomsky's influence, see Pustejovsky 2016.

11 11 One mind/body problem that Chomsky does take seriously is the traditional problem of “free will,” which many have thought is incompatible with the kind of “deterministic” theories that the natural sciences pursue. However, he (2010) regards this issue as not really a “problem” that can be addressed scientifically, but a “mystery” that will likely remain beyond possible human understanding. This view is sometimes associated with his views about the impossibility of a theory of speech “performance,” but it is importantly independent of it: performance may simply be a massive interaction effect, unamenable to theory, involving no mysterious “free will” at all. Cf. below and Collins Chapter 36 of this volume.